WATCHING SHAGS AND GUILLEMOTS 175 



ornament their runs. I think it was on this same nest 

 that I noticed the picked and partially bleached 

 skeleton — with the head and wings still feathered — 

 of a puffin. It had, to be sure, a sorry appearance to 

 the human — at least to the civilised human — eye, but 

 if it had not been brought there for the sake of orna- 

 ment I can think of no other reason, and brought 

 there or, at least, placed upon the nest by the bird, it 

 must almost certainly have been. The brilliant beak 

 and saliently marked head of the puffin must be here 

 remembered. Again, fair-sized pieces of wood or spar, 

 cast up by the sea and whitened by it, are often to be 

 seen stuck amongst the seaweed, and on one occasion 

 I saw a bird fly with one of these to its nest and place 

 it upon it. In all this, as it seems to me, the beginnings 

 of a tendency to ornament the nest are clearly exhibited. 

 It would be interesting to observe if the common 

 cormorant exhibits the same tendency, or to the same 

 degree. The shag being a handsome and adorned 

 bird, we might, on Darwinian principles, expect to find 

 the aesthetic sense more developed in it than in its 

 plainer and unadorned relative. 



Both the sexes share in the duty and pleasure of 

 incubation, and (as in some other species) to see them 

 relieve each other on the nest is to see one of the 

 prettiest things in bird life. The bird that you have 

 been watching has sat patiently the whole morning, 

 and once or twice as it rose in the nest and shifted 

 itself round into another position on the eggs, you 

 have seen the gleam of them as they lay there 



"As white 



as ocean foam in the moon." 



